On Friday, the Lithuanian Court of Appeal upheld a regional court's ruling to sentence Algirdas Paleckis, a former Lithuanian politician convicted of spying for Russia, to six years in prison.
A panel of three judges dismissed his appeal, meaning that the verdict of Šiauliai Regional Court has entered into force. Paleckis will now be sent to prison to serve his sentence, amounting to around five years after taking into account the 18 months he spent in custody before trial.
The 50-year-old man is currently out of custody, but remains under intensive supervision and has paid a bail of 50,000 euros.
"There's no objective reason to disagree with the first instance court's assessment of the evidence," Judge Norkūnaitė said during the hearing, adding that Paleckis was rightly found guilty of spying.
Paleckis did not attend the court hearing, but his associates issued a written comment before the hearing, saying that “the system is scared of us” and that “the fight against the corrupt, oligarchic US puppet had to provoke a reaction”, without providing an explanation.
A large group of his supporters gathered in the courthouse. When they heard the court's ruling to reject the appeal, the people started chanting "shame", and most of them left the courtroom before the verdict was fully read out. Police officers were present near the courtroom.
Paleckis denies espionage charges, saying he was conducting a journalistic investigation. He claims that he did not know about Russian citizens' ties with Russian secret services and was in contact with them purely for his journalistic and political activity, and also for reasons related to a business he was setting up jointly with Domantas Bertauskas.
Deimantas Bertauskas, a Vilnius businessman who stood trial along with Paleckis, was released from liability because he confessed and cooperated with law enforcement. He is now under the state's protection.
According to the case files, Paleckis and Bertauskas were tasked with collecting information on officers and judges who worked on the January 13 case in Lithuania.
In the 2010s, Paleckis was convicted of denying the Soviet aggression of January 13, 1991, when 14 people died after Soviet troops attempted to topple the Lithuanian government following the March 1990 independence declaration.
He claimed that the people were killed by "our own", repeating the Kremlin’s version of the events.
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